


After the End

by PaperHatCollection



Category: Bugsnax (Video Game)
Genre: Cibophobia, Entomophobia, F/M, Grambles not actually in the fic, snaktooth island, unreality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-01
Updated: 2021-03-01
Packaged: 2021-03-13 01:53:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,646
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29768898
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PaperHatCollection/pseuds/PaperHatCollection
Summary: A Sandopede remembers an unfinished song.
Relationships: Gramble Gigglefunny/Wiggle Wigglebottom
Comments: 1
Kudos: 23





	After the End

**Author's Note:**

> Based on this general writing prompt from writing-prompt-s on tumblr: Reincarnation exists. You wish it didn’t. All conscious minds are simply feeding appendages of an extra dimensional parasitic being which consumes meaning from its host universe. Upon death everything you have experienced and all that you are is stripped from you. You vow to poison the beast.

It was a whisper on the wind. A leaf snapping free of a swaying branch, fluttering to the water below with all the force of a plummeting wish, the beating of a Sweetiefly’s wings as it fled the _ploink_ of the leaf being pulled under the surface of the water. It was something small, something musical. A song, a melody, a spark of inspiration.

It was two paws wound together, the _plunkplunkplunk_ of strings, a breeze and a muse and so many stars above and below and within. 

The Sandopede- a tropical breakfast variation new and exclusive to the shores of the island, skidded to a sudden stop on the sandy beach, it’s followers colliding together before they had a chance to correct themselves and back off, waiting obediently for their leader to resume their trek across the moonlit sand. Glossy, googly eyes swayed gently back and forth, focusing on nothing and everything all at once.

Avocado legs skittered over the sand, before slowing, settling, tapping ground with more purpose, a slow but steady rhythm. Then, with no prior warning, the Sandopede took off again, it’s Sub Sandopede counterparts following vigilantly along the familiar trek. It’s own voice carried it’s name across the winds, before it could be whisked away and swallowed by the night sky. A cry, a triumph, high and swaying and curling into itselves in a beautiful octave, a declaration. Come and find me, come and look, come and chase after me.

Look and see me.

Look and hear me.

Look and listen.

_A faded star burning with all it had, struggling to outshine the spotlight, a swans song sung before the first days light even reached the horizon. A breeze ruffling sunkissed sunset fur, a laugh, a whisper, a promise. So, so very lonely-_

_An ocean of desires, or wants, of Need. Endless darkened caverns, swirling eyes gazed ever upwards, an abyss of stolen memories and forged taste, pulling in all that drifted near in fruitless attempts to curb an ever growing Hunger. The ground under their feet was Starving, quaking in hunger pangs as rock and snax pulled itself apart into a gaping maw ready to swallow whoever was foolish enough to mistake the mimicry of the island as anything but aggressive._

Cold stone had replaced the warm sand under the Sandopede, without it having even realized it’s path had changed. It’s sudden surge into the cranny nestled into the side of the hot springs had spooked away several Baja Tacroach, leaving it alone to gaze over an overwhelmingly familiar view. Razzbys and Pineantula’s alike make their treks back and forth through the sand, as Crapple’s patrolled the shorelines. Against the horizons, Snaquiri and Lovely Sweetiefly danced in the air, the cry of a Waffstackarak threatening to make an appearance should it be called for right.

The remains of a chair, nearly swallowed by the vines and water and rock of the island, and the glint of a bell laying nearby. The moon watched overhead while the sun slept the night away, and the island sighed as a new breeze swept across the island, bringing with it the sent of a bakery and something fresh from an oven. And perhaps, if you knew what you were looking for, you could pick apart the echo of the shadow of the memory of the Grumpus it had been taken from.

There was a sorrow here. Something that _had_ that no longer _was,_ or perhaps had never _been,_ an unfinished symphony to an unheard audience, blithely, wistfully sought for. A need, a hunger that had nothing to do with the stomach, but that had been attempted to be stuffed full of Snax anyways. The skittering of legs of leave and onion and fluttering of a white wing in a stomach. The taste of rice and fish. The whisper of a feeling of a doubt, was any of it ever really enough, the need for attention. 

The inescapable shiver of eyes pointed at you, no matter where on the island you went.

There was something _there,_ something the Sandopede didn’t even realize it didn’t know. Something _more,_ something that longed to be free. Scratching at the edges of an abyss so deep and so dark that it swallowed stars that drifted past it’s gaping maw, devouring every trace of light until it spit out a black hole, pulling other stars ever closer to it’s own fate. A single sound escaped the Sandopede, the second note in a unfinished song, and it _pulled_ hard against the Pull.

It was swaying back and forth now, legs skittering in place, small concerned chirps and warbles escaping it’s fellow Sub Sandopedes. It was missing something. It wanted it Back. The shadows of Snaktooth island seemed longer, deeper, darker than they should have been under the light of the full moon. If you looked close enough, if you knew what to look for, you could almost see the real island behind the shadows, in the cracks where food and fauna didn’t quite mesh how they should, with far too many teeth for something waiting to be eaten, far too active for something willing to be caught. Fasting the island had done nothing but make it _ravenous_ with hunger, willing to tear itself apart to get what it wanted. 

An inescapable feeling was rising, and it was getting harder to ignore. There were no rose tinted glasses to view the world through, not when the trees creaked and groaned as they swayed towards the little Snax, and shadows crept up the sides of the cliffs, and the Sub Sandopedes that had followed ever diligently scattered into the bushes as the beach was hushed into silence, the breeze quieted into a mere whisper of a thousand voices from a thousand years back, when the island had first grown bold enough to be Greedy. The little Snax wanted nothing more than to press paws over its ears, to block out the sound, to scream and thrash and _fight_ , to claw and bite if need be. It had never had paws, or a mouth, tooth or claw or the choice not to Listen, but _She_ had.

A whisper, a thought, a muse snapped at the edges of consciousness. Something pushing back against the ever swirling soup of sensations and thought and Need of the island, of every Snax that crawled and skittered and leapt across it’s mass. Little ticks, compared to the real thing. Tiny little lures, guiding the real prey ever closer to being swallowed up, a constant primal chant of _eat expand eat evolve eat mimic eat eaten eat-_

_“Do you ever feel like- do you feel like you’re meant to be someone else? Like... like somewhere along the way, you messed up, and now all you can do is chase after everything you missed and hope you catch up to it?”_

_“...”_

_“When I’m with you, Darling? I know I’m right where I’m supposed to be.”_

Below the surface, no deeper than skin, Snaktooth Island pulsed. A steady rhythm, hidden amongst the swaying of the leaves and the waves lapping at the shore, veins of tunnels that carried red liquid, the essence of the island itself. Depths untold, Snax all the way down, caverns that twisted in on themselves and folded into a mimicry of a memory of food. Of insects, a mockery of their limbs and features forged from the flesh of fruit and torn from the pieces of other Snax, should need be. There was something in the depths of the psyche, that you'd find if you’d peeled it apart, turned all the pieces inside out and cut away the parts you didn’t need, that focused in on the eyes. The window to the soul, that made one looke to them to tell friend from foe.

And the island sure tried to mimic the eyes.

Deep below the ground, in the dark, scuttling over the remains of bones picked clean, the island slumbered. Should it wake, were it to seek out its own food, rather than waiting for it’s next meal to wash up on its shores or fall from the sky, than the Snax wouldn’t be contained to the island they splintered off from. But wake it didn’t, conserving what energy it had stolen, creating a false reality of trees and rocks and waterfalls and sand dunes and snow topped mountains and runes that had somehow managed to survive the test of time. After all, everything on the island- above and below- was just a façade.

_“You’re not gonna- you’ll stay with me, won’t you, Wiggle?”_

_“For as long as you need, Darling.”_

Staring at the horizon, as the sun began to raise over the surface of the water and cast the world in shades of orange and pink, the little Snax remembered a smile and a laugh and a promise. It took one step foreword, and then another, and then one more. And then the cliff it was standing on disappeared from underneath it. And the Snax Fell.

Somewhere along the way, Wiggle Wigglebottom had lost the one thing she’d come to this island to find.

...

...

.....

......

Nothing on Snaktooth island is what it seems. 

A bell jingled along the shoreline, bouncing on the wrist of something not quite-Grumpus and not quite-Snax, accompanied by the plucking of an old banjo found in the remains of a village near the center of the island. The figure walking along was quite the sight to see, sand and palm leaves and sea shells and small stones, a mimicry of a Grumpus, but not the worst the island has seen.

The figure came to a stop by the shoreline, silent, watching the clouds drift across the horizon with a small smile. Nearby, Snax called out, but for once she found she simply wasn’t that hungry. 

Perhaps, she thinks, Lizbert had the right idea.


End file.
